Handler
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Leo Akaba was supposed to be the final enemy.
**A/N:** Manga and anime merged to give this. Remi will be rolling on the floor laughing if any of this does come true, especially considering how early we are in the manga. Don't even know what GOD looks like. :( And seeing as how long it took for them to show us Ruri, I'm not hopeful for finding out this year.

Written for the

Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #201 – alternate ending! AU  
Arc-V bingo, the non-flash version, #027 – best out of three

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 **Handler**

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They thought it was the finale when Akaba Reiji defeated his father at the very top of Academia. By all rights, it should have been. It was what they'd all been fighting for. The Lancers that had assembled under him, so he could take down his father's kingdom. And each of them individually… saving Yuzu, saving Rin, saving Ruri, saving Selena, finding freedom… Lots of reasons, and it had boiled down to defeating Academia and the Professor, in the end. Come down to defeating Akaba Leo.

So when the man fell off the battlements, cursing them and screaming in a despair that matched his lifelong work, it should have been the end. Except it wasn't. Academia's duellists didn't stop with their head cut off. They fought harder. The spectating Lancers found themselves pushed back, and it took them a moment to realise it wasn't anger at all. Not anger, but fear. They were afraid of something. Knew they'd lost some chance. Knew that something wouldn't be held back anymore, wouldn't be stopped.

The only two who weren't were the two who hadn't born witness to the deciding duel that hadn't, in the end, decided their fates at all. Except maybe Reiji's himself, because he'd defeated his father and he was free from that, at least, if nothing else. Yuuya and Yuuri were too far gone in their duel. Dragon after dragon was summoned, and evolved. Odd Eyes and Starve Venom. Dark Rebellion and Clear Wing. Beast Eyes and Rune Eyes and Dark Requiem and Crystal Wing and Burning Venom. Then Odd Eyes Rebellion faced down Clear Venom and then the field was cleared for a heart-stopping moment, only to find the four original dragons again.

And then the one true dragon awoke, and they all understood. They all saw the final enemy that needed to fall – and if only they'd seen it before. Seen that Akaba Leo had been attempting to unite the worlds to cause – no, destroy – exactly this.

And they knew, at least, what they had to do to fight against it.

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They didn't want to fight. Of course they didn't. Yuuya was their friend, even though he didn't look like Yuuya anymore. The face was still the same, but the rest of him had changed. His bangs had streaks of four different colours and sagged limply down his face. His eyes were entirely black, and he wore nothing but a white cloak that hid everything else. Everything save the duel disk he wore, black as well. Activated and with a single card on his disk. The monster that roared above him.

'Genesis Omega Dragon.' It must have been him who spoke. His lips moved. But his voice was different. Darker. Flat. Controlled. 'Destroy everything.'

And then the rest of the world burst out of control, because that dragon roared once and the city across the ocean burned and that was the sort of power they faced. The Academia duellists backed away, then steeled themselves and sent out their mechanical monsters. They burned in the next roar and fell into the ocean like ash.

Reiji was yelling at them, to back away, to let the Academia have their stand while they found the only thing that could stop him and _what was that?_ the Lancers cried. Their friend was out of control again but it was different this time, different because the four dragons had become one and that dragon – that Genesis Omega Dragon – that could attack a city across the ocean with a single blast, who could wipe out legions of Academia soldiers who'd assimilated almost an entire world.

Their saving grace, for the time being, was that the dragon wasn't firing at them instead.

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They found the girls. Yuzu and Ruri and Rin and Selena, and all of them were glowing with health and only showed them how much they hadn't known. Reiji cursed his father's secretive ways, that determination to do everything himself because if only they'd known about Genesis Omega Dragon, of the truth of those four boys from four different dimensions who looked exactly the same, then they might have been able to come up with another solution.

They also found the papers. Years and years of research about the dragon, about the four souls that were the key, and the four that acted as seals. And now the first four had been united, and the second four would fight their hearts out to save the resulting one but would they succeed? Would they reach him, swallowed by the destructive dragon who could, at any time, fire on the little island they stood upon and then that would be the end?

But the dragon knew those girls were still here. It was why he didn't, couldn't, destroy that place where they stood. In the papers. All in the papers. Questions they'd never found the answers to. Why there were four boys in four different dimensions. Why Yuuto had given his Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon to Yuuya. Why he'd disappeared, only to appear, at times, through Yuuya. Why Yuuya had picked up the other summoning styles so easily – except maybe Fusion because that hadn't really had anything to do with his Fusion counterpart, or maybe not because it had been Yuzu, ultimately, Yuzu. And why he'd be swallowed by something that wasn't him. Why they'd all be.

It was that dragon, calling.

It was those girls, soothing, stopping.

And now they had to soothe the savage beast in all its glory, if they could pull it off.

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Four girls. Each of them had a different friend and they'd merged into the boy that opposed them. The dragon hovered atop them. Summoned to the field when its four making parts were sacrificed and it showed just how far he'd come as a duellist to pull off five different types of summons in the one turn and the girls knew they had their work cut out for them.

Reiji reached the last of the notes, meanwhile, and vowed he'd prove that thesis of his father's, at least, wrong. Reira, who'd come to like Yuuya as another older brother to him, wholeheartedly agreed. And so did the others. Yuuya's friends. Yuuto's. Yuugo's. Yuuri's. A cluster of people who'd fought against each other and side by side, and were now hoped they'd get their friend back at the end of it all. The friend that had become the final evil threatening the world.

Where did Genesis Omega Dragon come from? From times long gone, and the force that had split it into four and into the keeping of four split pieces of soul was gone as well, her legacy carried by those girls and the bracelets around their slender wrists, to make sure the four boys and their dragons never met except they'd met. And it had been inevitable that they'd meet.

Akaba Leo had known it was inevitable when the means of dimension travelling had been discovered. Knew that entropy would bring together four boys that should never meet, so he'd set about setting the stage so they'd meet on his terms, and the four seals that could stop the dragon would be assembled as well.

They were. Now they had to hope that the price wouldn't be something they'd later regret. Even if they couldn't sacrifice the world by not paying it.

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They were losing. They tried their best to get through and they were doing it too, but as life points stood, Genesis Omega Dragon was overwhelming them.

Even with all the times the boy commanding him had stumbled, had tried to spare them, had tried to fight back.

There was a weakness. There had to be but it was so hard to search with Yuuya or Yuuto or Yuugo or Yuuri or this mismatch who hadn't yet given a name in front of them. Life points on all ends were decreasing but one of them was going to run out first. They could tell. He could tell. Genesis Omega Dragon would have the first blood.

But that didn't mean they had to waste that blood. In the end, it was Ruri, but not until her trap restored the others and gave them a second chance.

And next was Rin, who pulled the card from the Xyz duellist's grave and did it again.

And it was Yuzu and Selena, who knew each other the best and had fought side by side outside the Academia's training grounds, who dealt the killing blow Genesis Omega Dragon. And funnily enough, they'd had to use Yuuya's Pendulum cards to do it.

But the blow backfired and struck them all, and the end result was a draw.

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They'd found the miracle in the moment, somehow. The only way to keep all of them alive and the Professor had disregarded it because its chance was so small, so infinitesimal – but they'd pulled it off.

But there was a sacrifice anyway. After destruction came rebirth and the city that had burned was restored. The Xyz dimension was restored. The damage done across worlds was restored. Akaba Leo, a heap of bones and blood on Academia's shores, was restored. But the four boys that had become one and the handler of Genesis Omega Dragon was not. And neither were the girls. They'd become one by the end as well. Four and four. One and one.

And while they slept in the aftermath of the world's rebirth, the others thought. Where would they go? Ruri had her brother. Yuugo and Rin had her little brothers and sisters, those orphans. Yuuya had his parents. Yuzu had her father, and both, their friends. Yuuri had Dennis and the Professor. There was no one happy place for them. They may never be.

It was only because of the ability to transcend dimensions that there didn't need to be.

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They also wondered if Genesis Omega Dragon was really neutralised and gone.

Academia was, understandably, thrown. They'd spent their entire lives preparing for this and it hadn't gone to the script. And the Lancers hadn't expected that last fight they'd faced, even if they'd faced it admirably. It was hard for them to grasp the possibility of peace. Too easy to think it might come back, that their reprieve was what unconsciousness gave them and nothing more.

And they could only prove that wrong when the two woke up and the world didn't almost end a second time.

And then they did wake up. And the only hiccups were the state of their minds when they did.

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The girls – girl – had memories from all four and it was a confusing mix. The boys – boy – on the other hand, remembered next to nothing and that was more worrying. All they got was an age – 14, and correct – and a name – Yuu – and that name might've been a butchered version of any one of the four component parts, or simply the only bit they shared in common.

The girl cycled through all four names before deciding she needed a new one. And promptly rejected any that her friends came up with. She was, on the other hand, more than happy to pitch in with stories for Yuu about one of his component parts. Interrupted by the others, of course.

And then the girl, following some random string of thought, yelled out "Tomo" and decided that'd be her new name.

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They wound up going back to the Standard Dimension, in the end, because both Yuu and Tomo needed a parent figure in their lives and that was where the parents were. Yusho came back with them and it was a bit of a mismatched family but a family nonetheless. Shun joined them as well, and some of the orphans, and Sora and Dennis and the You Show Duel School gained quite a few more students too. Things changed. Other things stayed the same, like all the friends they'd made in their battle across dimensions and how they'd grown. And even if Yuu never recalled his insecurities, he'd learnt from them. He smiled long and hard and feared his own, rarely seen, anger, and it had scared them as well, the way his eyes had grown wide, then pin-sized, and then he'd wavered on his feet before falling into Tomo's ready arms. But a new apocalypse wasn't starting up, so they deemed it safe to let him know it was perfectly okay to blow off some steam when he had to.

It took him a while to get the hang of it though. That fear had deep roots, and rightly so. Always had, even back when there was four of them and they hadn't realised how they held the keys to the destruction of the world.

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Sometimes, sometimes they looked at Tomo and Yuu and thought back to when there was eight instead of two. Sometimes, sometimes, they wished time had rewound back to those times but most of the time they don't because they've passed the finale and not one of them can face going through it all again. Not one of them can face pushing past the end again, fighting their dear friend or watching the world burn or drowning in a deep dark feeling or a bright white one that swallowed them and everything they were and spat out someone new at the end of it. So now it was just Tomo and Yuu and they weren't Yuzu or Yuuya, or Ruri or Yuuto, or Rin or Yuugo, or Selena or Yuuri and they just had to learn to get used to that.

And, meanwhile, Academia and Leo Corporation looked further into Genesis Omega Dragon. Looked at the four monster cards they'd confiscated (because the card that housed the apocalyptic dragon had disappeared after the duel, to wherever it had come from). Looked at the shards from the jewels that had made up those four bracelets. Looked for a way to stop innocent teens from getting swept up in it all again. But there wasn't really a way. Not in their lifetime, but the near-tragedy would play itself out again and again with four more boys and four more girls and it wasn't fair as well but that was the battle between destruction and rebirth for the world.

Again and again, they'd trudge towards an enemy they thought they knew, only to reach the top and find the true last villain to be someone else entirely. Maybe it'll be another enemy. It could have been Yuuri as easily as it had been Yuuya but Yuuya had won for them, had gained the dragon. And Yuuri had hunted those four girls. It was easier, far easier, for the Lancers to hate him before they'd learnt the truth.

But then they'd remind themselves that that tale was over, and the next group of four might not have a Yuuri to act as the most villainous of the four, or the other three chasing him and drawing together to summon a force they don't even know. And maybe they would expect the enemy. But they shouldn't because none of those four boys, in the end, had been even close to evil. Not even Yuuri. All of them had been heroes to someone or other. And the hero shouldn't have wound up the fated final villain except he had and it could be better or worse in the next run.

But at least they could change the ending. Throw in the dues ex machina they'd stumbled upon that said they didn't have to sacrifice the handler for their happy end. And maybe the next go round would discover how to save all eight as the separate souls they were instead of the two combined ones they were now. Tomo and Yuu, travelling through dimensions and visiting their many friends that Tomo remembered, sometimes in more than one way, and Yuu got reacquainted with, but always returning to the parents that had adopted them. And there were many wary looks when they drifted about in Fusion, but many smiles as well, from Asuka and the other duellists from You Shou's Fusion branch, from that little boy Yuzu had met when she'd first arrived, and Edo Phoenix that Yuuya and Yusho had both become well acquainted with. They weren't expecting an enemy. Just two old friends visiting and that was all they were. That was all they should have been. Not warriors. Not renegades. Not dimension invaders. Not handlers for the dragon that almost destroyed the world, or the only force that could seal it away again but just two children who'd fought a war and then grown up licking their scars and were now out to see the world on their own terms.

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 **Post A/N:** Burning Venom and Clear Venom are both made up, owing to the fact that we've seen next to nothing of Yuuri's duelling at the moment. Burning Venom is the evolved version of Starve Venom, like Dark Requiem and Crystal Wing, and Clear Venom is a synchro fusion between Clear Wing and Starve Venom (like Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste from 5Ds) and was summoned by Yuuri and opposing Yuuya. Genesis Omega Dragon is from the manga though we don't know anything about its summoning method yet, and the other cards have all been revealled in the anime at some point or other.


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